“An imaginary palate” – where Social Media meets the Food Industry
An interesting multilingual talk about metamorphosis of food&wine journalism and how it is changing the user’s experience took place today at Centro Servizi G. Alessi. Five of the most famous food&wine journalists in Italy attended the session: Federico Fioravanti, journalist, Tom Mueller, journalist and author, Maurizio Pescari, food&wine journalist, Mort Rosenblum, author of “Olives: The Life and Lore of a Noble Fruit”, Alfredo Tesio, food&wine correspondent in Italy for DR – Denmark.
Not many people are thinking about the web and Social Media when they go shopping and eating, but it seems that Internet is changing even the food industry. User’s behavior is different, and so it is the web. A few years ago people searched on Google for a product or a restaurant they wanted to visit and they could find reliable articles by famous food&wine journalists. Today everyone with a laptop and a camera could report their own experience about the places they have visited, the food they have tasted and the experience they’ve had while doing it. “We are all traveling newspapers” said Federico Fioravanti. Change is a must for all journalists, even for those from the food&wine industry. Journalists produce and explore more and more commentaries and collect feedback, news are not anymore the most interesting part of journalism, agreed all of the speakers in the discussion.
“In the past a product was considered to be good, only because a journalist said it was good. Today everybody can judge and everybody can say loudly what they liked and what they didn’t”, said Maurizio Pescari. Consumers started to realize that they don’t have to rely only on what they read in newspapers and what mainstream media reports. “Facebook is becoming a living encyclopedia” and no paid advertisement could make us believe that one product is good, if our friends say that it is “rubbish”. What we need today is information from user’s experience and we can easily access it. Young bloggers completely changed the ways of communication and today the idea of being part of a network is amazing and help people to explore new worlds.
In the same time the speakers didn’t miss to mention that bloggers could never be able to replace professional food&wine journalists. If we rely too much on random blogs we’ve found on Google, “we are missing this reliable piece of information that only a good journalist could provide”. The blogs are extremely risky because of the quality of information. We have to be very careful while reading and trusting them, because an intentional blog post could kill someone’s business. Food and the web have something in common – “challenge lies in quality”.
Being food experts, the speakers didn’t miss to stress the fact that there is no a social network that could replace a family dinner. Modern people are more and more ignoring the importance of talking while having a “decent” family dinner. It is not only about the food, it is about communication.
The talk slightly shifted to food and wine industry in Umbria and how it needs to be changed. New marketing strategies have to be introduced in the region if they want to be competitive. Web marketing is a must in this change.
A short video of An Imaginary Palate, Mort Rosenblum
